Email This Article    Print

UC Researchers Declare War on Children’s Cholesterol Levels

A team of physician-researchers at the University of California (UC), San Diego, School of Medicine, who consider the fight to lower cholesterol levels on a nationwide scale an all-out “war,” calls on parents and healthcare workers to take children’s cholesterol levels seriously as a means of preventing a future with heart disease.  The declaration of war on coronary heart disease follows the lead of the National Institutes of Health, which lists obesity and diabetes as other epidemics of our time that can be conquered using behavior modification and education as their chosen weapons of war.

Describing today’s approach to treating heart disease only after symptoms appear as “too little, too late,” the researchers recommend that parents start feeding their children a diet low in saturated fats and cholesterol beginning as early as 7 months of age to provide the most protection from a future diagnosis of heart disease.  This type of diet is safe for children of all ages and does not produce adverse side effects that might jeopardize a child’s health.

By training children from the earliest age possible to embrace a heart-healthy diet, the preventive measures the diet provides far outweigh the benefits of waiting until middle age to change deeply ingrained lifestyles in order to reduce the risk of death from heart disease already established.

The statin class of drugs often prescribed to lower cholesterol in the hope of preventing further coronary damage is not as effective as many people assume it is.  Statins have produced 30% fewer deaths or cases of disability attributed to heart disease but the remaining 70% of people taking them do experience adverse cardiac events while taking the medication as prescribed.

The UC researcher team says TLC (therapeutic lifestyle changes) beginning at an early age is more effective than relying on statins once damage has been assessed, with the likelihood of preventing death and disability using TLC above statins’ 30% rate.

Streaks of fatty lesions in the arteries are a sign of atherosclerosis and heart disease to come and these lesions are becoming more and more common in children and young adults.  Many people have lesions considered in the advanced stage by the age of 30, a situation attributed to the typical American diet, which feeds the nation’s current epidemics of obesity, diabetes, and heart disease.  Cholesterol testing is not routinely done with children at this time.

By waiting until middle age, when symptoms of coronary artery disease are unmistakable, the ability to treat the disease is limited.  The best treatments prevent future damage but don’t repair the damage done before diagnosis.  By establishing a healthy lifestyle in childhood, heart disease is less likely to develop at all.

The lifestyle changes advocated by the research team would only be effective when embraced on a national scale and over many generations, a situation that leaves many skeptics.  The team uses the decline in the nation’s cigarette-smoking habit over the last several generations as evidence that their proposed behavioral modifications can be just as effective eventually in the war on heart disease.

Daniel Steinberg, MD, PhD, a pioneer in lipid research, and his colleagues from UC San Diego, have published their recommendations in the August 5 issue of Circulation, a journal published by the American Heart Association.

Source: University of California - San Diego

• Mesothelioma Treatment Reaches a New Breakthrough Moment
• Jeez, Doc, Get Some Sleep!
• Medical Exam Predicts Type 2 Diabetes as Well as Genetic Testing
• Medicaid Pays Millions for Unapproved Drugs
• Where’s the Beef? All Fast Foods Based on Corn
• Is Financial Fraud Behind Dramatic Spike in Pediatric Antipsychotics?
• Will Fast-Food Ads Follow the Marlboro Man Into History?